Peter Lynch Quotes

Price fluctuations have only one significant meaning for the true investor. They provide him with an opportunity to buy wisely when prices fall sharply and to sell wisely when they advance a great deal.

I called my business manager in California and said, 'Sell all of my stock' - what little of it I had - and it's the only smart financial move I ever made.

I want attractive stocks that will benefit from persistent institutional buying pressure.

The real key to making money in stocks is not to get scared out of them.

Whenever you hear a discussion about the short-term swings in any given stock's price, your immediate thought should be whether it matters to why you are investing.

People often panic when the markets go down and sell off their stocks - but then they aren't in the game when the markets are doing well.

Don't bottom fish.

We continue to advise that investors remain committed to a patient, long-term outlook and that the best way to do well in stocks is to use a disciplined, time-tested strategy that has the benefit of empirically tested results over a variety of market environments.

The market is often stupid, but you can't focus on that. Focus on the underlying value of dividends and earnings.

It's human nature: for most investors, the pain of stocks going down is more tangible than the joy of when they go up. The common impulse is to do something - anything - to minimise the pain.

The stock market is a giant distraction from the business of investing.

Stock market goes up or down, and you can't adjust your portfolio based on the whims of the market, so you have to have a strategy in a position and stay true to that strategy and not pay attention to noise that could surround any particular investment.

Regardless of what we think we know and should happen the reality is that a lot of stock action is random. Therefore, money management is crucial if you want to be successful as a trader. To me, it's the cornerstone of both making a living at trading and building wealth.

Who would think of buying or selling a private business because of someone's guess on the stock market? The availability of a quotation for your business interest (stock) should always be an asset to be utilized if desired. If it gets silly enough in either direction, you take advantage of it. Its availability should never be turned into a livability whereby its periodic aberrations in turn formulate your judgements.

I think the worst mistake you can make in stocks is to buy or sell based on current headlines.

You must never delude yourself into thinking that you're investing when you're speculating.

Equities will do well over time - you just have to avoid getting excited when other people are getting excited.

If you are not willing to own a stock for 10 years, do not even think about owning it for 10 minutes.

You have to keep your priorities straight if you plan to do well in stocks.

The advice "you never go broke taking a profit" is foolish.

The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator. This means ... that he should be able to justify every purchase he makes and each price he pays by impersonal, objective reasoning that satisfies him that he is getting more than his money's worth for his purchase.

Funny, but after trading for more than 15 years, I still am capable of forgetting a cardinal rule: The paper you own, in the end, will be intertwined with the fate of the 30-year bond.

I would rather sustain the penalties resulting from over-conservatism than face the consequences of error, perhaps with permanent capital loss, resulting from the adoption of "New Era" philosophy where trees really do grow to the sky.

Anything can happen in stock markets and you ought to conduct your affairs so that if the most extraordinary events happen, that you're still around to play the next day.

The reader can test his own psychology by asking himself whether he would consider, in retrospect, the selling at 156 in 1925 and buying back at 109 in 1931 was a satisfactory operation. Some may think that an intelligent investor should have been able to sell out much closer to the high of 381 and to buy back nearer the low of 41. If that is your own view you are probably a speculator at heart and will have trouble keeping to true investment precepts while the market rushes up and down.